Wizards of the Coast will shut down its forums

UPDATE: Wizards of the Coast’s Trevor Kidd, who works on D&D and social media, took to Twitter to address some of the concerts people have over the company shutting down its official forums.

I could hop onto all the forums having this discussion or I can say it here and let it disseminate. I’m choosing the former.

Moving away from running our own forums doesn’t mean we think longer conversations or fan sites/forums aren’t good or necessary. They are both good and necessary. From what I’m seeing, they flourish and you enjoy them more when they are run/managed by fans.

D&D and RPGs in general are all about storytelling and talking with friends. It makes sense that we want to share those stories.

So, it’s vital that we have places to share those experiences and stories, like forums and fan sites. But it’s not vital that D&D run those. Closing our forums does not in any way lessen our interactions. We’ll still be talking and lurking in your social media and fan sites.

And the idea that forums are going away because D&D and Magic are doing poorly – that’s ludicrous! Both are doing very, very well.

We’ll still be talking with you here (on Twitter) and elsewhere. Enjoy your new forum homes and don’t forget to migrate your treasured content!

And back to our original post on the news…

Calling it “not an easy decision,” Wizards of the Coast announced today it will retire its community forums next month.

In a release posted on its site, the Magic: the Gathering and Dungeons & Dragons company said the majority of online discussions about its products are no longer taking place in its forums. With the advent of social media, that’s where most of its customers have gone to talk.

It makes sense. Even here at Crit For Brains, we rarely visit web forums any longer. Personally, I mostly talk about games on Facebook and Twitter. Even more discussion happens on Reddit and Tumblr.

But it’s a move that will surely anger some longtime users of the forums. Surely, some people have been using them for years or have specific topics bookmarked.

You have until Oct. 29 to save your favorite WoTC forum posts. After that, they’ll be deleted. Forever.